


the bite that binds

by stormbourne



Series: dimilix vampire au [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Frottage, Jealousy, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Vampires, vampires? but wait! SEXY vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:47:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21869242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbourne/pseuds/stormbourne
Summary: The arrangement has been in place since at least the days of Loog and Kyphon, or possibly even before. The heirs to the Blaiddyd line have unnatural, inhuman strength, yes. But it comes at a cost, and the scions of House Fraldarius serve not only as their kings' most loyal right hands, but as the ones who must slake their supernatural thirst.If only things were that simple.Felix/Dimitri, wherein the Blaiddyds are vampires and the Fraldariuses are their feeders.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Series: dimilix vampire au [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1802140
Comments: 15
Kudos: 420
Collections: 2019 Dimilix Holiday Exchange





	the bite that binds

**Author's Note:**

> Heads up, there are some pretty vivid violent descriptions during the western rebellion stuff when Dimitri absolutely loses it. Please be aware and ready to skip past it if it fucks with you.

"All right, Felix," his father says, as Glenn turns down his collar and unbuttons the top of his shirt. "You're likely never going to have to do this, but it's important that you know how it's done."

Felix is six years old. Glenn is nine, and he's puffed out his cheeks in an attempt to look brave. He draws his hair back into a ponytail, pulling it away from his neck. He tugs his shirt a little bit more open.

"Rodrigue," King Lambert says, gently. "Felix is still so young. I don't think this is necessary. I don't want to scare the poor boy." 

"I'm not scared," Felix interrupts him. 

"He needs to know what's going to be expected of him, should Glenn or I be away," Rodrigue replies, as though Felix hasn't said a word. Dimitri is perched on the settee against the window, his eyes downcast, swinging his legs slowly back and forth. "And the best way to acclimate him to it is to get him used to how it looks early. Felix is a brave boy. He can handle it. Isn't that right?"

Felix nods so vigorously his head is liable to fall off his shoulders. Just in front of him, Glenn snorts. King Lambert sighs, shoulders heaving, and shakes his head. 

"If you insist," he says. "Dimitri. Chin up, now. I know you're hungry." 

Dimitri's eyes dart up, but catch on Felix's face. His cheeks flush, pink against his pale skin. "You promise you're not gonna be mad?" he asks, his voice small. "Or think I'm scary?"

"I promise," Felix says, and crosses his heart with the first two fingers of his right hand. Dimitri doesn't look especially convinced, but he nods and gets to his feet. Glenn leans down a little. Dimitri steps up to him, breathes deep, and opens his mouth. 

Glenn flinches when Dimitri bites down. _I wouldn't flinch,_ Felix thinks, trying to ignore the hot rush of jealousy through him. This is going to be Glenn's responsibility, the heir and future sworn knight to the crown. He's going to be second choice. The backup. _I wouldn't even make a face. Dimitri could drink from me and I'd never try to pull away._

Dimitri's eyes are closed. His hair falls over his face so that Felix can't see where he's got his mouth against Glenn's neck. Glenn's hand curls into a fist. His arms are ramrod stiff. He has his head tilted back toward the ceiling, his ponytail tumbling over one shoulder. Felix watches Father's eyes move from Glenn over to Felix, and then watches him smile and nod in approval.

It lasts for fifteen minutes. Felix, determined to prove himself, doesn't allow himself to look away. There's no sound as he drinks, but there is when Dimitri finally pulls away with a loud gasp of breath. Immediately, Glenn stumbles back, clapping one hand to his throat. King Lambert helps him over to the settee, where he drapes across it like all his muscles have turned into noodles. The healer takes over from there, and Dimitri raises one hand to wipe his mouth, which is stained bright red. His tongue slides out and Felix can see the points of his teeth. 

"Well done, Felix," Father says. "You did a very good job. I'm proud of you." 

"Next time," Felix says, a bit breathless, "can I do it?" 

A beat of silence hangs in the air. A moment later, King Lambert starts laughing. Then Father does, too. Felix feels his cheeks flush. He's just lucky Glenn is woozy and quiet on the settee, or he'd probably be laughing, too. 

But Dimitri doesn't laugh. He just wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and looks Felix in the eye. 

"Maybe," Rodrigue says. "We'll see how Glenn is feeling, won't we?" 

* * *

Glenn dies when Felix is 13. 

The only thing that makes it home is his armor. They bury it in an otherwise empty casket. Father looks off into the distance, after the ceremonies are over, and says a set of words that Felix will remember for the rest of his life. Dimitri is escorted away, but not before Father takes a turn feeding him. Dimitri eats like a dead man, and doesn't even wipe his mouth once he's done. Felix watches the entire time. 

Dimitri's red mouth haunts him. The blood drips from the prince's chin in his nightmares. 

Felix realizes, eventually, that Glenn died for the same things that keep his father feeding Dimitri, making weekly trips to Fhirdiad to keep him appeased. He eventually stops, and never tells Felix why, or who's taken on his responsibility.

Regardless, Felix meets Dimitri's new retainer -- and feeder -- when they go together to put down a rebellion out of the west. He has two red marks on his neck. Marks that would have, in a just world, been on Glenn's neck. The sworn knight of the future king, dead with only an empty casket in his grave. 

"Dog," he greets the Duscur, perhaps their age, perhaps a year older. Does it matter, when he follows in Dimitri's footsteps like a shadow? "Try not to get in the way." 

"His name is Dedue," the prince says with fondness that makes Felix's stomach roil. 

"He could be named Saint Indech for all I care," Felix says. "He'd best not cause trouble." _Men like him killed Glenn,_ he doesn't say, or, _Those marks belonged to my brother. Or, better, to me._ He urges his horse forward to join the other soldiers of House Fraldarius. Dimitri stays behind. Felix hears him speaking to the creature with low, kind words. Hot, jealous fury rolls through his mouth, down his throat like a shot of brandy. 

He takes his position in the vanguard. Dimitri, last heir to the Blaiddyd line with all his divine gifts, moves to the rear guard with his manservant. Felix doesn't expect to see him again until the rebels are brought down to the dregs. 

Hours later, when the rebels are all but routed and he's cleaning up the remnants, he sees a monster.

There, in the midst of some of the few rebels left, stands the prince, covered in blood. Felix surges toward him, intending to -- what? Rescue him? He fears he's already too late, but a second later, Dimitri moves, and Felix stops in his tracks.

One of the men turns to flee, and Dimitri's body flows like water as he thrusts a spear through the man's chest. Another soldier raises a sword. Dimitri roars like a beast and charges him, knocking him to the ground before ramming the spear through him as well. It makes a sick sucking noise as he pulls it back out. The other soldiers have begun to scatter, but the prince still catches one of them in the back with a wild slash. As he collapses, Dimitri lunges at another, and Felix turns away for a moment to keep from seeing the man's head fly from his shoulders. The last of them trips, and in an instant, Dimitri is on him. Felix watches as he throws his spear to the ground, rips at the man's skin with his hands, and then opens his mouth. His fangs flash for only an instant before the prince of Faerghus bites into the man's throat and rips it to shreds, as furiously as an animal. 

"Dimitri!" he hears his own voice yelling. The prince lifts his head from the pile of corpses he's nestled among and looks at Felix with blank eyes. Blood drips down his chin. He raises a hand to wipe his mouth, and Felix has, suddenly, a flash to the moment when he first watched Dimitri drink Glenn's blood.

_Promise you won't think I'm scary?_

"Get up!" he yells, striding across the field. Once he's close enough, he hauls Dimitri up by one arm. The creature below him blinks as though he's never seen Felix before. "They're fleeing," he hisses. "They're routed. There's no need for any more of this." He yanks Dimitri along like a disobedient child, the prince stumbling every step of the way. "You're meant to be in the rear guard," he continues.

"I can't let them escape," Dimitri murmurs.

"So you'll savage them like a beast?" 

Dimitri tilts his head like a confused animal. "If that's what I have to do to put an end to their evil ways," he says. "That's what they want."

"Those soldiers didn't want you to kill them," Felix replies, heated. "To _devour_ them."

"No, not them," Dimitri says dismissively, and shakes himself free of Felix's grasp. "I was hungry," he says a moment later. 

"Then feed from your new retainer," Felix replies, wiping the blood on his glove on his hip. "Like you've been doing since you met him, apparently." 

Dimitri just looks blankly at him. "I've fed from him, yes," he says, as though saying that he's been outside before, or that he lives in Fhirdiad. "But it was never meant to be him."

"It was meant to be my brother," Felix says. Dimitri steps closer, his eyebrows furrowed like he's working out a complicated problem. There's a spot of blood under one eye, and on the opposite side, his eyebrow is smeared with it.

"It was meant to be him at first," Dimitri says, "I suppose. But I didn't want it to be him, Felix." His eyes fall down to Felix's throat, and Felix steps back even though he's wearing furs and a high-collared shirt and armor. Dimitri reaches out to where Felix was standing just a moment before, fingers curling at the exact spot where his neck had been.

The worst part is that Felix still wants to let Dimitri touch him. Feed from him. 

He steps forward again, grabs Dimitri's arm, and hauls him bodily all the way back to the rest of the troops. His Duscur retainer is there, amid a group of soldiers that look less than pleased. Felix feels the tension between the soldiers and the Duscur boy -- because he is a boy, Felix thinks, and probably not that much older than him or Dimitri -- slacken as the men spot the prince. 

"You're lucky," one says to Dedue, who just turns toward Felix and Dimitri. Felix shoves Dimitri forward. He stumbles across the bloody, snowy ground. 

"Get that animal out of my sight," he says. He can't scrub the image of Dimitri's bloody teeth from his mind. Everything else sticks, too, but it's stringy and loose compared to the memory of Dimitri ripping a man's throat out. That feels like it's been branded onto the inside of Felix's skull. He sees it when he closes his eyes.

Felix had watched, once, when some of the knights came home with his father after a hunt. One of them was injured badly, carried in on a pallet by two others. When he'd asked what had happened, and if Sir Westley was going to be all right, his father had grimaced and gotten down onto his knees. The healers would do their best, he said. But as for the injury, it had been the very boar they were hunting. Gone angry and savage and wild in an attempt to survive. 

Later, they had hauled the boar's body in. Its long, white tusks had been completely covered in blood.

"And get it into a cage if you know what's good for you," Felix says, back in the present, the snow and the fire, the remains of the rebellion.

"Your Highness," Dedue says. Dimitri, not looking back up at Felix, shakes his head. 

Felix takes a deep breath, in and then out, and turns his back on the animal he used to consider his best friend. It takes everything he has not to look back at him as he walks away. 

* * *

Dimitri finds him first at the academy.

It would be a lie to say Felix has been avoiding Dimitri. It'd also be a lie to say Felix wasn't acutely aware Dimitri was also attending. Every step he takes has been calculated. The knowledge has haunted Felix since he enrolled, since his father told him that the prince was planning to attend as well, and everyone at court had been surprised by his insistence. 

Besides, it's hard not to know. Dimitri's quarters are beside his. 

Felix is in the training yard when the prince corners him. He's playing at pleasantries. He's pretending at being a man with a heart and a soul, instead of an animal with bloody teeth and crazed eyes. 

"Boar," Felix says, casually.

"Good afternoon, Felix," the animal wearing his friend's skin says. "It's been some time, hasn't it? I was hoping to see you in the capital again, before meeting you here. We might have made arrangements. But I suppose they've worked out well enough, haven't they?"

Felix swings one of the dull, wooden practice blades through the air. It makes an intensely unsatisfying noise. He's going to have to ask the staff where they keep the blunted metal, once courses start. The wooden ones have no real heft or weight.

"Did you want something?" 

Dimitri's smile falters slightly, and then stiffens like someone has plastered it to his face. "I wanted to say hello to my old friend."

" _'They've worked out well enough, haven't they,'_ " Felix mimics. "What is that even supposed to mean, boar? Talk sense, or at least in a language rational human beings can understand."

Dimitri's shoulders slump for a moment. He lowers his head, takes a breath, and raises it again. He glances toward the corner, and then back at Felix, and then shrugs, palms out. 

"Our rooms are beside one another," he says. "Don't you think that's at least a little bit serendipitous?" 

"I'm just glad I'm not sharing a wall with Sylvain. Good luck with that," Felix says, and doesn't speak again. 

Dimitri leans against a pillar, watching him. Felix lets his eyes dart over, every so often. The boar's gaze is unwavering and deeply piercing, but there's a darkness in it. It's been that way every day that Felix has met him since his brother died saving his life.

"I was wondering," Dimitri says.

"I imagine you must have been," Felix says. His mind races. Dimitri has surely noticed that Felix knows he's watching. What awful thing is he about to ask, or say? 

"I was hoping, actually," Dimitri says, and his voice goes a little bit shy. When Felix stops his motions and looks back, the prince of Faerghus is wringing his hands in one another. "That we might go back to ... the way things are supposed to be. With Blaiddyd and Fraldarius." 

Felix considers what he means for a long moment, and then lets out a bark of laughter. 

"You were hoping ... what?" he asks. Dimitri almost cringes under the tone of his words, like a cowed dog. "You were hoping that we could just go back to the ancestral arrangement between us, as old as Loog and Kyphon themselves, the monster and the mortal that the monster feeds upon? Is that it? I thought you had your Duscur dog to do that for you now." 

"Dedue can't always be there," Dimitri says, but his voice has gone small and a little sullen. The way it used to when they were children and King Lambert wouldn't let him have his way. "You're going to be Duke Fraldarius, someday, and the highest authority on my council. It's only logical to ..." He takes a deep breath. Felix turns toward him fully, now, and watches his shoulders rise and fall as he composes himself. He takes a moment, eyes closed, and then opens them and raises his hands in a defensive, placating gesture. "Why not reinitiate ourselves to it?" he offers. "I'll need someone that I can trust more than anyone. It's the duty of House Fraldarius, isn't it? And I thought you ... "

"We were children," Felix says, knowing the rest of the sentence Dimitri was going to say. "I wanted a lot of frankly stupid things when we were children. Before I knew what you really were." 

"A monster?" Dimitri echoes Felix's earlier words, but his tone is almost playful. When he says it, Felix can see the points of Dimitri's teeth inside his mouth for an instant. Not full feeding fangs. Not like this, not here, when he's clearly not hungry. But enough to give Felix pause, and maybe that's the point. Maybe Dimitri is laughing at him, playing some sort of colossal joke. 

He thinks for a moment of how it would feel to have teeth in his neck, draining his blood, and then instead he forces himself to think of Dimitri ripping a man's throat out. 

"I'm sure your Duscur bodyguard would be offended to learn that you're looking to replace his services as a blood bag," Felix says, and turns away to go back to his training. Behind him, Dimitri heaves a deep breath, in and out. 

He makes a point of it, after that, to start actively avoiding Dimitri. The boar has his dog to keep him hale and healthy, and Felix would rather not see him to begin with. He's the first one out the door after courses, and the last one in the door before they start. After a bit of that, Dimitri begins to get wise, and then Felix dallies after class until Dimitri gives up. He makes sure when he's in the training yard, he's always busy sparring with someone else. He takes several optional exams just to have an excuse to keep Dimitri at arm's length. 

Yet he can always feel Dimitri's eyes on him. Dimitri begins to wait for him outside of the dining hall, because Felix can avoid a lot, but he can't completely avoid eating. Sometimes Dedue is there. Sometimes he's not. Sometimes Felix can smell the blood, heavy in the air, and Dedue has a fresh bandage wrapped around his neck. Felix ignores them. Sometimes Dimitri attempts to speak to Felix. Felix blows him off. Sometimes _Dedue_ attempts to speak to Felix, and Felix ignores him, too.

Halfway through the Garland Moon, Dimitri finds him after class and refuses to leave until Felix acknowledges him.

"What do you want, boar?" Felix asks. Both of them are late for their next course, at this point. Even Professor Byleth has left, and Felix didn't fail to catch the way she raised her eyebrows at them as she did. 

"Felix," Dimitri says. 

"What," Felix snaps. Dimitri has positioned himself in the middle of the doorway out of the room. He doesn't have his arms spread to block Felix's exit, but Felix knows that when he tries to leave, Dimitri will move to intercept him. So he doesn't bother, crossing his arms and meeting Dimitri's gaze. "This had better be important, if you insist on keeping me here." 

Dimitri's expression wavers a bit, and his eyebrows draw together. He sighs, and all at once his firm stance seems to go lax. It's clear that he hadn't thought this through. Maybe he didn't think Felix would speak to him. That, Felix tells himself, probably would have been a better approach.

"We used to be friends," he says. "Best friends. You remember that, I'm certain."

"We used to be a lot of things, Dimitri," Felix replies. "I used to shit in my diapers, but you don't see me doing that anymore, do you? Sometimes people grow up." He goes to brush past Dimitri, since his shoulders have slumped and his determined expression has gone almost plaintive. 

Dimitri grabs him by the arm.

"Let go of me," Felix says.

"Is this because of -- of what I am?" Dimitri asks. 

Felix can't help but to let out a bark of laughter. What he is? Certainly. But not that he's a blood-drinker, endowed with the Blaiddyd strength at the price of normality. It's that his humanity is gone, and has likely been since the tragedy of Duscur. Maybe it was gone even before then. Felix knows he was certainly naive enough not to know. 

"If you mean your eating habits," Felix says, and goes to shake Dimitri off him, "no." Dimitri holds on like an anxious child. Felix meets his eyes. "If you mean that you're an animal behind that pleasant, smiling mask," he continues, "then congratulations. You've figured it out." 

Dimitri swallows. Felix watches the shadow of his Adam's apple dip and rise again. 

"Is it always going to be like this, now?" he asks, and lets Felix go. 

Felix doesn't bother to answer. He turns away from Dimitri and steps out into the courtyard. The Duscur man is there, standing just outside the classroom, waiting. He has a bandage wrapped around his neck. Felix raises his head, fury blooming in his stomach like a sick flower.

That should have been Glenn.

Or, really, it should have been him.

"Cover that thing up," he says. "Nobody wants to be reminded of what the boar has to do to survive. Least of all me." 

He turns again. Just over his shoulder, he catches a glimpse of Dimitri, emerging from the classroom as well. Dimitri's eyes dart from him to Dedue, and then back. 

"Take better care of your food," Felix says, and leaves. 

It's a month later that it happens. One night, only a bell before curfew, Felix is anxious in a way that makes him need to walk. So he walks. He goes part way around the circuit of the main campus, dormitories to stables up toward the chapel, and then decides he'd rather cut through the dining hall to get back. Not once in his walk has he seen the boar, which is strange to him, given how Dimitri has been dogging his steps since they arrived. 

Outside the dining hall, two figures are pressed together in what would look like an embrace to anyone else. They're even tucked into the shadows like an illicit couple trying to hide their tomfoolery from the monks and guards. But Felix has seen that position before, albeit when he was much younger. When he looks, he can see blond hair hanging over a face pressed against the larger person's neck. Dedue's hands are pressed to Dimitri's arms, and Felix can see that they're rigid.

"Can't you do that somewhere private?" he shouts, not really caring if anyone hears him. 

Dimitri pulls away from Dedue and blinks at Felix. Dedue, meanwhile, immediately claps a hand to his neck, a small white cloth clutched within it. They've _prepared_ for this. Felix supposes he ought to be relieved that they know not to take chances. Instead, he's furious. When he tries to put a pin into his anger, cordon off what he's really upset about, it's impossible. There's too many reasons. Dimitri's teeth glint red in the moonlight as he wipes his mouth. 

"Good evening," the boar says. He doesn't even sound ruffled. "Doing Seteth's job for him, Felix?" 

"He'd thank me for it, but so would everyone else," Felix says. "Get to the infirmary," he barks at Dedue.

Dedue looks at him like he's grown a second head. "That's hardly necessary," he says. "His Highness can control himself. And we're quite practiced at this now. He knows when to stop so that I don't require medical attention." Still, he turns away. Felix watches him. "Good night, Your Highness," he says, and turns off toward the dormitories. 

"I suppose," Felix says, after he's gone, "you probably wish you'd pulled rank and gotten them to put his room next to yours instead." 

Dimitri shrugs. There's a line of blood, dark as pitch in the dim light, across his chin. "I wouldn't say that," he says. "Why? Does it bother you that I have to eat, Felix? I offered to go back to how things should be, unless you've forgotten." 

Felix hasn't forgotten. He also hasn't forgotten how Dimitri looked with a rebel's blood smeared across his face. 

"Keep it to your room," he says. "Nobody wants to see you eating, boar. It makes people sick."

With all the guile of an innocent child asking if he's done something wrong, Dimitri turns his eyes on Felix and purses his lips. "Does it make _you_ sick, Felix?" 

_Promise you won't think I'm scary?_

Felix refuses to dignify that with an answer. He brushes past the boar, the same route Dedue took toward the dormitories, and tries not to think about it. 

He thinks about it.

He rolls over in bed, his hand on his dick, unable to _not_ think about it. His hand strokes and pumps desperately. He imagines Dimitri tilting his chin up. Leaning down. Biting into his neck. He has no idea what it feels like. His father never did let him attempt to feed Dimitri, and thank the Goddess for that. But Felix is sure it's not painful. Glenn, his father, Dedue -- not a one of them has ever seemed like they were in pain, after being fed from. So instead, it must feel pleasant. Delirious. Intoxicating. The Blaiddyd line has venom in its bloodstream. Why not use that to lull their victims into complacency?

He bites down a groan on the back of his free hand, and tightens the other around his cock. In his fantasy, of course, Dimitri goes further than a feeding. As he's drinking, he rocks his hips against Felix's. He pulls his teeth out to lean up and whisper in Felix's ear that he knows they both want this, as he slides his hand down to toy with Felix's cock. 

This is disgusting. He's disgusted with himself. 

He keeps going. 

Dimitri nips at the shell of his ear. Dimitri licks the fang marks on Felix's neck closed, and pulls him down into bed. Dimitri puts a hand between Felix's legs and spreads them. Dimitri ...

"Fuck!" he hisses against his own hand, trying to keep himself quiet as he ruts and strokes and jerks himself to completion. His voice breaks. "Fuck! Dimitri!" 

He refuses to even look in Dimitri's direction, come morning. Professor Byleth assigns them stable duty. Felix stays silent the entire time, even as Dimitri makes embarrassing attempts at conversation.

He starts to spot the two of them more often. Sometimes feeding, in increasingly conspicuous spots at increasingly visible times of day. Sometimes just walking and talking together like the oldest of friends, Dimitri's face creased into a laugh. 

Felix knows that it's jealousy rolling through his gut, but refuses to entertain the knowledge. 

He begins to dream of Dimitri's red, red mouth, but instead of seeing it tear out a man's throat, he sees it press kisses -- bloody ones -- down Felix's arm, up his leg, over his abdomen. Felix wakes hard, and bathes in cold water before going to class.

He pushes Dimitri and Dedue apart every time he finds them, scolding them for not doing this in the infirmary or at least in the privacy of their own rooms. But every time, Dimitri's eyes catch his and Felix thinks that there's a challenge in them.

He knows, at least, how to deal with challenges. 

"I hope you're not expecting me to go easy on you," he says, as he and Dimitri circle one another in the training yard. It's an hour until curfew. Everyone has turned in for the night or is busy preparing to do so, finishing up their coursework for the day, socializing. Felix has better priorities.

"I'd expect nothing less," Dimitri says. Felix watches him for a moment, gauges Dimitri's completely implacable expression, and then surges forward.

He is, at least, as capable a fighter as he's ever been. He blocks each of Felix's blows with ease, spinning on the last parry to send his own sword toward Felix's gut. Felix dances around it, moving toward Dimitri's open side, but Dimitri is prepared for that, too. He catches Felix's sword, wrenching it with his own to the side, attempting to disarm Felix.

"You should know better than to think I'd fall for something like that," Felix says, managing to yank his sword free and right himself. Dimitri, in turn, straightens back into a guard stance, grinning. There's a wild light in his eyes, but it's not the same animal fury that Felix saw at the rebellion. It's tamer, contained. _Leashed._ He's doing the world a favor, maybe. The boar needs an outlet. 

"Sometimes," Dimitri says, with that same implacable smile, "you prove yourself very rash, Felix, and it makes you impulsive. You can hardly blame a man for attempting to take advantage of that." He swings his sword forward almost thoughtlessly, the Blaiddyd strength bringing his slash down hard against Felix's blade. Felix parries and steps backward, out of breath. Dimitri advances. 

"What is that supposed to mean," he says, and Dimitri swings again. Felix catches his sword and dances around him, but Dimitri's calm little smirk remains in place as he moves forward, this time with a thrust. 

"You like to pretend that you're a rational actor, I suppose," Dimitri says, not relenting in his onslaught. Felix is reduced to pure defense, parrying, blocking, ducking under the blade. "But sometimes, you prove there's much more going on in your heart than you like to give voice to, isn't there?" 

Felix's mind races, and Dimitri swings again and again. Felix blocks, blocks, a step back with each one, until suddenly his back is against a pillar and Dimitri effortlessly cuts the sword right out of his hand with one halfhearted blow.

"Felix," he says, and presses his hand to Felix's cheek. His lips quirk, and he leans in a little bit. "If you were jealous of Dedue," he says, "you could have just asked me to feed from you, instead of playing this nonsensical game." 

Felix is about to protest and demand what game Dimitri thinks he's talking about, and then Dimitri's teeth skim over his neck. His breathing goes shallow. He feels a flush over his face as he tries to hold very, very still.

"I'm not jealous," Felix whispers. Speaking too loud feels like it will shatter what's happening. He'll wake up with nothing of this remaining but vague memories and a tightness in his stomach, if he speaks too loudly. 

"I suspected, the first time you saw Dedue, back during the rebellion," Dimitri says, directly against Felix's neck. Felix can feel his lips moving. "But when I saw how you spoke to him all those weeks ago, after class, I knew. And Goddess help me, Felix, I didn't know how else to get you to speak to me again, to _look_ at me again -- " 

"You staged all those encounters," Felix says, and now he's willing to raise his voice, embarrassed and furious. This is humiliating. Dimitri has pulled him along like a leashed animal. 

"I did," Dimitri says, and at least he sounds ashamed of himself. "The more it went on, the worse I felt about it, but Felix, I needed -- I still need you. You're going to be my closest advisor, someday, and ... " He pulls back, and Felix heaves in a deep breath, staring up at the sky so he doesn't have to look at Dimitri's face. "And I'd like you to be my friend, as well," his prince murmurs. Felix glances at his face, but has to look away again almost immediately. Dimitri isn't even looking at him, not at the moment, but his face is an open book, and Felix isn't sure he knows how to feel about the desperate longing in his expression. 

He swallows hard. He can feel his pulse hammering in his ears. Dimitri skims his lips over Felix's pulse again. And maybe it's true that the beast Felix saw, at the rebellion, was just a wild instinct set loose. Maybe it's a creature that he'll never see again. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

He knows better.

"Just do it, boar," he says, if only because he wants some closure to this tension, one way or another. Dimitri hums softly against his skin, and then Felix feels him bite down.

For a moment, it feels like nothing. There's no pain, but no intense, delirious pleasure like he'd fantasized about in his room. If anything, it's just uncomfortable, with Dimitri's teeth pressing deep into his neck in a way that his mind instinctively fights against. He tilts his head back. The muscles in his neck pull against Dimitri's fangs. The sky overhead is dark and rife with stars, the Goddess' Blue Sea Star at the center of the display as always. 

An instant later, the Blaiddyd venom hits. Warmth floods through his body, from his neck to his chest, down both his arms and legs. It centers low in his belly, and every nerve in his body tingles with sudden, pleasant sensation. A moment later, he realizes his eyes have closed, and he doesn't remember closing them. There's a tingling sensation in his fingers and toes, but it's hard to concentrate on almost anything except the warm energy pulsing through him.

What might be a moment and might be an hour later, Felix realizes he's hard. His eyes shoot open, but Dimitri doesn't seem to have noticed. He's leaning forward just enough that aside from his teeth in Felix's neck, there's no physical contact between them. Felix is genuinely not sure whether it's a blessing or a curse. He closes his eyes and tries to shoo away the warmth, but the venom keeps surging through him. His knees feel like they're about to give out. His thoughts feel hazy and distant. The single one he manages is wondering why everyone else has gone rigid when Dimitri bites them, when it feels this good.

Dimitri pulls his fangs out of Felix's neck, and immediately Felix slides down the pillar, breath heaving. He should probably do something about his wounds, he thinks, vaguely and from behind a wall of glass, but he can't think clearly enough to really care. Something tingles at his neck. He hopes he isn't bleeding out.

"The first time is always the worst," Dimitri says apologetically. Felix opens his eyes and looks up at his prince, his vision swimming. The boar crouches down to meet him, and gives Felix a weak smile. There's only a spot of blood on his lip, and the rest of his mouth is clean. "You'll be back to normal in a few minutes." His tone is still a bit bashful. 

"My neck," Felix says. His tongue feels heavy, and it's hard to think clearly enough to form a full sentence.

"It'll heal," Dimitri assures him, but leans forward and presses his hand to the spot anyway. His palm is warm. "The venom closes the wounds. I would have thought Rodrigue would have explained it to you." 

Maybe he did, Felix thinks, when he was still a boy, but he doesn't remember it. And after Glenn died, he didn't have many casual talks with his father. Much less ones about Dimitri.

He pulls his legs together to hide his hardness, even though all his limbs feel like they're made of jelly. 

"It's like this for everyone?" he asks.

Dimitri shrugs.

"The first time, yes, I believe so." He rubs at his own neck, thoughtfully. "Dedue has told me that after he got used to it, it mostly became a matter of steeling himself to be ready for it to be over. I've been drinking from him for so long that he doesn't even get dizzy afterward anymore." He smiles a bit sardonically, and shrugs again. "Though I suppose you know that, after finding us so many times. I _am_ still sorry about that."

There are dozens of different responses Felix could offer to that. Dimitri doesn't deserve his forgiveness. Such a manipulative game is unlike him, but can Felix blame him, when it appears to have worked exactly as planned? He could always just tell Dimitri this is the only time, that they're going back to how things were before. 

"How often do you have to do it?" is what he asks instead.

Dimitri's face goes briefly confused, and then almost rapturously happy in a way that makes Felix's stomach tighten. Maybe they can do this, he thinks, feeling delirious. His fingers feel like dead weight, but they tingle when he clenches his hands into fists, and he can feel the blood flow slowly returning. 

"Once a week, at least," Dimitri says. "But Dedue lets me feed twice a week, usually. The venom will help with that, so you don't lose too much blood." There's an almost puppyish energy to his voice, and though he doesn't ask the question, Felix knows it's being asked.

"Twice a week," he says, and curls his toes inside his shoes. They respond, thankfully. His hands still feel a bit leaden, but better. "Fine." 

"Splendid!" Dimitri replies, bouncing to his feet like an excited child. He offers Felix a hand, but Felix slaps it aside and pulls himself to his feet, turned away from Dimitri just in case his shame is still visible. That's another question, but it's one he's completely unwilling to ask. _Does Dedue get hard when you drink from him, boar?_ Even the thought makes him flush.

"I'm going back to my room," he says. "It's almost curfew anyway." 

"Let me help you there."

"If you so much as touch me, I'm never feeding you again," Felix says. Dimitri immediately pulls away, palms up in deference, and Felix walks alone out of the training yard. 

He manages to drag himself back through the dormitory halls, all the way to his room. Though the boar let him return on his own, Felix knows that he's following ten or twenty feet back, making sure Felix doesn't collapse. At this point, he has feeling back in his limbs, and he opens the door with ease, slamming it behind him. A few moments later, footsteps draw close, pause at his door, and then continue onward. 

He does collapse at this point, into his bed, but only after he's managed to yank off his boots and peel off his breeches. He doesn't bother with his shirt, but pulls himself out of his undergarments and presses his face into his pillow. The walk back has softened him a bit, but the memory of heat pulsing through him from Dimitri's fangs has him ready to go again in an instant. On the other side of the wall, the scion of the Blaiddyd line is preparing for bed as well, and Felix bites down on his pillow so he won't make any noise. It's faster and more frenetic than it was last time. He wants to work it out of him, to purge the desire from his system even though the venom will remain behind. 

He can't help but to revisit what happened. The way Dimitri leaned over him, skimmed lips over his neck. His mind embellishes the details, imagines Dimitri lingering a bit longer than he did. Dimitri's fingers brushing his chin. He knows, logically, that he couldn't have seen Dimitri's eyes while he fed, but he envisions them, blazing blue like the deepest heart of a flame. He remembers that Dimitri's mouth was clean, but some part of him wishes it hadn't been, that he'd been able to see his blood in his prince's mouth. 

There's something intimate about it -- his blood, flowing through Dimitri's veins -- but also something hot and intense. Dimitri is possessing a part of him in a way he's possessed almost no one else. Glenn, Rodrigue, his Duscur retainer. The last of those fills Felix with hot, sick jealousy, but he fights it down. Dimitri had _wanted_ to drink from him, had pled with him to agree. Dedue is just a familiar convenience. 

He comes hard against his own hand, and shouts into his pillow, and prays that Dimitri didn't hear him. 

It becomes a pattern. Twice a week, he feeds Dimitri, which means he doesn't need to drink from Dedue anymore. Twice a week, he stumbles back to his chambers and touches himself. At some point, he thinks Dimitri must become aware of it. He can't keep getting aroused while Dimitri drinks his blood without the boar beginning to notice _something._ But if he does notice, he never says a word, just smiling pleasantly at Felix once it's done. 

And so what, if Felix starts to show him a bit more courtesy? He doesn't go sullen and silent when Dimitri joins him in the dining hall, or follows after him to ask the professor's advice. So what if he guards Dimitri's back in battle a little bit more fiercely than before?

Everyone sees Dimitri go mad in the goddess' tomb, but it's that close guard which allows Felix to watch Dimitri go wild again, the same way he did at the rebellion. 

It's one thing to know, in his heart, that the beast is still underneath Dimitri's smiling, chivalrous shell. It's another to see it come unleashed, roam out in the open like the wild boar the prince has been the entire time. Having the beast unleashed only feet away from him, lunging forward with teeth bared, attempting to reach Edelgard to -- what? Savage her? Devour her? 

Well, that's different.

Felix considers not going to feed Dimitri, but if he doesn't, someone else is going to have to. Dedue, likely, and even the thought makes Felix's stomach roil. And if not him, and not Dedue, then who knows who Dimitri might find to feed on. He understands the Fraldarius oath on another level, now. It's not only about fealty or loyalty, but about keeping the monsters contained, caged where they can't hurt someone else. It's about being a shield. 

He opens Dimitri's door.

The boar is pacing. He doesn't even look at Felix as the door creaks open, and the hinges have always been loud. He's muttering under his breath. His hair is greasy and hangs in clumps, like he hasn't bathed. 

"Boar," Felix says. Dimitri gives one hard shake of his head, still not looking at Felix. 

"I told you," he mutters, turning not toward Felix but toward the wall, "I told you, I'll bring you her head, if you just give me _time --_ "

"Boar," Felix repeats, firmer, and then, louder still, " _Dimitri._ "

Dimitri snaps to attention, whirling toward Felix. There's a darkness in his eyes that doesn't abate. If Felix had come here with any hope that Dimitri would be healed by his presence, it would be gone now. Of course, he's never believed in fairy tales, but some part of his heart still sinks. 

"Felix," Dimitri says, and then, suddenly, "Tell Glenn I'm sorry this is taking so long. Please, he won't listen." 

Felix swallows, and watches as Dimitri's eyes dart to his throat. Specifically, to the two red marks against the side of his neck, not yet old enough to be scar tissue. Felix breathes in tight through his nose, and then reaches up to unbutton his collar.

"You need to eat," he says. "Come on, we don't have all night. If the Adrestian army is going to march on us, we have a lot of work to do come morning. I don't have time to just sit here and pamper you. Eat, or don't." 

An instant after he finishes, the boar is already sinking sharp teeth into his neck. Felix hisses. For the first time since he's started feeding Dimitri, it _hurts._ He can feel Dimitri's teeth piercing him like a pair of needles. More than that, he can feel Dimitri's other, blunter teeth pressing against him, almost breaking the skin as well. On instinct, he attempts to pull back, but Dimitri's hands latch around his shoulders and hold him still. 

"Boar," he manages, an instant before the venom hits and sends a shudder rolling through him. He pushes it down with more ferocity than he ever has before. Dimitri didn't rip out a man's throat in the tomb like he did at the rebellion, but he would have if Felix had let him. There's nothing to this to find intimate, much less arousing. He's a shield. He's a human leash. It's like being doused in cold water. 

Regardless, his fingers and toes begin to tingle a bit, and there's still a coil of warmth in his stomach. He breathes out, his vision swimming. The tingling spreads up his arms and legs, and he feels his knees start to buckle.

"Boar," he says again. Dimitri _snarls_ against his neck. That brings Felix's drifting mind snapping back into focus, and he notices sharply how his vision is starting to blacken at the edges. He lifts his arms and gives Dimitri the harshest shove he dares, with those teeth in his throat.

Dimitri stumbles away. There's an unpleasant warmth at Felix's neck that he knows means the fangs haven't come out completely clean, and he presses his hand to his neck to staunch the bleeding. Dimitri blinks gormlessly at him, and Felix stumbles back, falling on his ass against the wall. He grabs blindly at the floor and comes up with a shirt that smells like sweat and musk. He presses it against his throat, breath heaving. His cock, traitor that it is, is still half-hard. Dimitri barely seems to see Felix at all, much less his dick. 

"You could have killed me," Felix manages. 

Dimitri blinks down at him, not comprehending. There's thick red spots around the corners of his mouth, dripping down his chin. It's significantly less hot than Felix's fantasy. His shirt is stained with blood, not all of it Felix's. Has he even changed since the battle in the tomb? It should be less surprising, considering he hasn't bathed. Felix presses his hand against his neck again, dizziness almost overcoming him. 

"Felix," the prince finally says, and Felix remembers, in a fit of delirium, the boar's red tusks after the soldiers' hunt. 

"Get away from me," Felix says when Dimitri kneels down, his eyes wide with what he thinks must be concern. "Don't touch me. I'll -- I'll kill you, boar, I swear to Seiros herself, I'll fucking -- " 

"You need to go to the infirmary," Dimitri says. There's still an edge of wild madness to the edge of his voice. He attempts to take Felix's arm to help him up. Felix slaps him away with his free hand. 

"I'll get there myself," he says. "Don't touch me, boar. Don't fucking -- don't you ever touch me again." A shield for the people from the monster at the gates. What nonsense. What kind of shield is he meant to be, if the monster kills him? 

He uses his free hand to grab the edge of Dimitri's desk, to pull himself to his feet. He leans against the wall, breath heaving. The venom tingles in the wound at his neck, but he knows he needs more care than that. He'll be damned if he lets Dimitri help him to the infirmary, though. He takes a heavy, lumbering step toward the door.

"Felix," Dimitri says, "Please."

"Don't fucking touch me," Felix repeats, and shambles slowly out the door and away down the hall. It takes him three times as long as it should to get to the infirmary, and he's dizzy and nauseous by the time he gets there, but he manages. Alone, without the monster pretending to be a man at his side. 

He avoids Dimitri once again until the Adrestian army is knocking on their door. 

And then, well.

Then Dimitri dies. 

* * *

The future king of Faerghus is eating a rat when Felix checks on him.

Dimitri is known to their entire army to be haunting the cathedral like a ghost. Felix has heard all the rumors at this point. He never comes out, he never speaks, he never sleeps, he never eats. Some of the rumors he even believes -- anyone who looks at the man can tell it's been weeks since he's bathed. But some he knows to be falsehoods. No man can go without sleep or food. But the answer to the latter of those problems, at least, has been puzzling him. Dedue is dead as they come, and Felix hasn't seen anyone else eagerly offering up their neck for the boar. 

_Well,_ he supposes. _Good at least to have that question answered._

It's clear just from looking around the chamber that this isn't the first one he's eaten, and it likely won't be the last. He might have managed bigger game, on his journey to the monastery, but there's not much for a creature of his persuasion to eat in these ransacked remains except for the vermin. And on that front, it's obvious that Dimitri has helped himself. 

"Get up. This is disgusting." 

The boar prince looks up at him over the carcass in his hands, brow furrowed like Felix is speaking a language he doesn't understand. Felix reaches down and hauls him to his feet, shoving him back against the wall. He stumbles, dropping the rat, but still doesn't say a word.

"The heir to the Blaiddyd line, and here you are eating vermin," Felix grouses. He unclasps his cloak, letting it fall to the floor, and begins to roll down his collar. "You should consider yourself lucky that nobody else has seen you like this." That's probably not true, but maybe the boar will listen to reason if he's flattered first. 

When he looks at Dimitri, the creature's single blue eye has locked onto his neck. Felix still has the tooth marks, mostly faded, and the scar line between them from when Dimitri fed too deeply. He can feel his pulse pounding behind his teeth. The boar's expression is still vaguely blank, but he moves forward slowly, like he's afraid Felix is a horse about to spook and flee. Fleeing would probably be a better idea, Felix thinks, but someone has to look after this mess of a man.

Isn't that how it's always been, he muses, between the Blaiddyd blood-drinkers and the Fraldariuses, their loyal servants and feeders? The shields against the monsters, of course. But maybe, Felix has begun to think since finding the boar again, he's meant to be a shield for Dimitri against himself, too. 

"Do it before I change my mind," he says. 

Dimitri reaches up and brushes a hand over Felix's neck. His hand is shaking. It's almost a parody of tenderness, of the way Felix had always wanted Dimitri to hold him. It reminds him of when they were younger. Of the first time he ever fed Dimitri.

Then Dimitri moves forward. He's gotten taller since they were boys at the academy, and he has to bend down to bite Felix. But he does bite, and Felix feels those teeth sink into his neck. He attempts to grab onto Dimitri's arm, trying to keep himself upright, but Dimitri instead wraps that arm around Felix's waist and pulls him close. Felix lets himself fall against Dimitri's chest, his neck bowed back, Dimitri holding him up so that his toes barely scrape the ground.

The venom hits as Dimitri pulls him in, and he closes his eyes, breathing out as his muscles go lax. Warmth curls in his stomach, the same way it did the first time he fed Dimitri and every time after. Dimitri's arm tightens around his waist. Time stretches out until Felix can't tell how long it's been. He can't tell if it's the venom, the blood loss, or both that's making him lightheaded, but when he opens his eyes, his vision swims and he heaves out a hard breath. 

This might not have been a good idea, he realizes much too late. 

Dimitri is barely himself, these days. He obviously knows the instinct to feed, but what animal doesn't? He barely speaks but to demand they march south and bring back the Emperor's skull on a pike. He thinks he saw recognition in Dimitri's face, but it might just have been understanding him as food willingly offering itself up.

"Dimitri," he croaks. It takes tremendous effort.

He hears the boar take a breath -- the closest thing to a gasp he can manage, with his teeth in Felix's throat -- and an instant later, Dimitri sets him down and pulls away. Felix immediately claps one hand to the wound, but he can feel the venom doing its work, tingling just under his skin. The wound isn't bad; it'll heal clean. His balance, though, is shot. He stumbles back against the wall. When he manages to look up at the prince of Faerghus, he looks haunted, studying Felix like an insect under a glass.

"You shouldn't have done that," his voice grinds out of his throat. 

"And let you keep eating mice?" Felix retorts. He lets himself sink down against the wall. He can tell he's going to be fine in a few minutes, just like any normal feeding. But the question lingers in his mind: Would that be true if he hadn't called out to Dimitri?

"I might have killed you," Dimitri says. He doesn't move, casting a long shadow over Felix, who tilts his head back as he heaves in deep, hard breaths. He remembers this exact moment, but when they were boys, in Dimitri's room. Felix clutching a shirt around his throat, bleeding. Dimitri staring down at him, not comprehending what he'd done. Felix gasping, _You could have killed me._ Dimitri, all at once, coming back to himself. 

"Well, you didn't," Felix replies. "Tough luck." 

Dimitri's dour expression tightens into one that looks almost annoyed. _Good,_ Felix thinks, _he does have other emotions buried in there somewhere._

"I'm not aiming to kill you," Dimitri says. "But you know that you were right, all those years ago, Felix. I am a monster, and an animal. I need to feed, and when faced with willing quarry, I find it hard to help myself." 

Felix snorts, still waiting for the pins-and-needles feeling in his feet to subside. He flexes his fingers to make sure they still respond. 

"Stop making excuses for yourself," he says. The boar's remaining eye burns down on him. He looks away. "Seems to me you could _help yourself_ when we were taking classes, boar," he continues. "How many times did I feed you, and only once did you actually hurt me? Trying to pretend that you're any more a beast now than you were then is your way of not taking responsibility for what you've become."

When he does look back up at Dimitri, his eye has gone a bit glassy. Felix can't tell whether Dimitri even heard him. He tests his legs, which at least seem to have regained full feeling, and pulls himself to his feet. When he pulls his hand away from his neck, the bleeding has stopped. Dimitri is still gazing blankly down at where Felix was sitting only moments before. 

"I'll be back to feed you again in a few days," Felix says. "Try not to do anything stupid before then." 

Of course, he'll be dogging Dimitri's heels to make sure he doesn't. But that's something he doesn't think needs to be said aloud. 

Sylvain is the first one to corner him, after a few weeks of feeding the beast. In fact, he finds Felix as he's unbuttoning his collar on his way back to the chapel. 

"Felix," he says. "You don't have to do this." 

"I'm not going to let him starve," Felix says, brushing past Sylvain. He hears the other man turn and follow him, his footfalls heavy. 

"You don't have to be the only one to feed him," he calls out. Felix picks up the pace, and he hears Sylvain quicken his steps as well. 

"I'm not going to make anyone else look after him, either," Felix says. "This is my responsibility. It's been my responsibility since the day I was born. The boar and I were practically made for one another." It would sound romantic to anyone else, but it sounds like a life sentence to Felix. Especially with no sign of the Dimitri he used to know lurking below the bestial front. 

"It doesn't have to just be yours," Sylvain says. His footsteps have stopped. "It could be all of us, you know. Ingrid, me, you. The professor. Mercedes and Annette would help, too, if you asked." 

Felix doesn't respond. He just keeps walking. The boar is waiting for him when he reaches the back of the chapel, and he reaches forward to rub a thumb over the two spots on the side of Felix's neck. 

"You came back," he says. He's started to say it every time Felix comes to feed him.

"Of course I did," Felix replies. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes as Dimitri leans down. A moment later, Dimitri bites him, and a moment after that, the venom hits Felix's system. He exhales slowly, feeling the heat wash over him. As usual, tension coils in his gut, sinking down to his cock. 

An instant later, Dimitri yanks him close, and Felix lets out a hard breath as his dick presses against Dimitri's thigh.

"Boar," he gasps. Dimitri keeps drinking, but the fingers of one of his hands slide down between them and tease at Felix's cock. Felix hisses out another breath, and then another. The boar doesn't relent, toying with the laces of Felix's breeches. "Stop it," Felix says, and he's sorely disappointed when Dimitri immediately does. 

The teeth pull out of his neck. The venom tingles in his bloodstream. His fingers and toes feel vaguely numb, and Dimitri's palm is still pressed against the curve of his dick. 

"Do you really want me to stop?" Dimitri asks. Felix has to grapple with what he should say and what he _wants_ to say. 

"How long have you known about that?" he asks, instead of giving either a yes or a no. 

The boar lets out a rumble of a laugh against Felix's neck. His mouth is still close enough to the bite marks that Felix thinks he's going to bite down again. "This may surprise you, Felix," he says, "but I used to have _two_ eyes. And even with one, I'm not blind. It was difficult _not_ to notice the way your face would flush. The way your breath would shorten. The way you would start to cling, as I fed from you more and more ..." 

The most embarrassing thing is how Dimitri describing it makes Felix's cock twitch, and he closes his eyes, suddenly aware of how flushed his face must be. He can feel heat in the tips of his ears. "I tried so hard to keep it from you," he murmurs, but it sounds petulant and childish. 

"Felix," Dimitri says. His mouth has moved up to Felix's ear. A shiver rolls through Felix's whole body. "You could never have hidden anything from me." 

His fingers move again, to finish undoing Felix's laces. Felix gasps as Dimitri pushes inside his breeches and takes him firmly in hand, stroking firmly. His hips rock forward, and he's only dimly aware of Dimitri steering him backward so he's against the wall. Just like the first time he fed Dimitri, against the pillar in the training yard. Woozy, dizzy, and incredibly hard. The only difference is, this time he doesn't need to return to his quarters. Dimitri is here.

"Fuck," he gasps, and Dimitri hesitates for an instant. The boar's fingers still, and he almost pulls away. "Don't stop," he says, and then, "Touch me." 

Dimitri inhales, sharply, and then he pulls away from Felix's neck and ear for a moment. Felix opens his mouth to reprimand him, only for the boar to kiss him with absolutely no mercy. His hand starts moving again an instant later, and Felix moans into the prince's mouth. He can feel the points of Dimitri's fangs pressing against his tongue. Dimitri is broad against him, hiding Felix in the shadow of his cloak. If anyone walks by, they wouldn't even know Felix is there. Felix knows nobody's coming.

Which is good, because Dimitri bites down on his lip and he howls like an animal. 

Dimitri pulls back, breathing hard. "Louder," he says, and dives back down, biting at Felix's neck but not sinking his fangs in. Felix gasps, whimpers. Dimitri moves up to bite at his ear, and Felix _mewls._

A moment later, Dimitri releases him, and pulls away completely. Felix is still hard as a rock, gasping, his pants unlaced and his cock throbbing. He blinks up at Dimitri, watching as he strips off his armor. He registers it like it's happening to another person, like he's two rooms away, or like he's in the audience of a play as the lead and the romantic interest are about to consummate their love.

 _Love._ As if the beast is capable of feeling something like that. 

Dimitri pulls himself out of his breeches, moves forward, and grabs Felix's shoulder to shove him face-first against the wall. The boar yanks Felix's pants down, pulls his cheeks apart, and after only another instant, shoves into him. 

At first, it's uncomfortable and on the wrong side of the line between pain and pleasure. Dimitri seemingly has no interest in his comfort, pressing in at a slow, but unrelenting pace. Once he's fully hilted -- Felix thinks -- he stills, giving Felix a long moment to adjust to the stretch, the presence of him, solid and intense and unmoving. Felix takes those long moments to try to calm down, willing his racing heart to slow as he forces himself to breathe even.

Then Dimitri moves. And, like being bitten, something pleasurable takes hold of Felix not long after. He scrabbles his gloved hands against the wall, fighting to find something to brace himself on. His voice begins to come out of him in full-throated moans. Dimitri's pace is unrelenting. He doesn't stop, but he does find the twine holding Felix's hair back, and yanks it out. Felix's hair cascades downward around his shoulders, only for Dimitri to tug it aside a moment later, fingers tightening on it in a vicious, painful grip. Felix senses what's about to happen only an instant before it does, and then Dimitri's teeth are in him as well and the venom is already coursing through him.

It's too intense. He can't keep hold of his composure when pleasure and heat pulses through him with the beat of his heart. Dimitri keeps thrusting, seeming to go deeper and deeper every time, even if Felix knows that isn't humanly possible. His teeth stay in Felix's throat. And one of Dimitri's hands -- still wearing his heavy gauntlets, why the fuck didn't he take those off? -- circles around Felix's front, finds his cock, and clutches tight, the tip of his thumb stroking just over the head in a way that treads the edge of painful. 

"Dimitri," Felix manages, but his voice sounds very far away and small, and he can't seem to get his thoughts to align. The boar groans against his neck, strokes Felix with a tight grip, and thrusts forward again, again, again -- 

He doesn't know if he cries out. Later, certainly, he hopes he didn't, and he hopes if he did that no one heard, but he does know that when he comes back to himself, plunging back to the earth like the Goddess falling from her star, there's cum on the wall and on the lower hem of his shirt. The boar is heavy against his back, but he's thankfully pulled his teeth back out of Felix's neck at some point. The same cannot be said for his dick. Felix tries to move, to pull away, and a wave of dizziness washes over him. 

"You came back," Dimitri says, against his neck, the same words he says every time Felix shows up to feed him. 

"How could I not," Felix murmurs in response. 

They linger there longer than they should. Felix lets Dimitri nuzzle at his neck, bury his nose in Felix's unbound hair, scrape teeth over the edge of Felix's ear. Even with all that, the boar doesn't bite down again. Maybe he's not hungry. Maybe he's just content with the way he took Felix apart already. Felix isn't sure he wants to know. 

Eventually, the light outside begins to dim. Through a hole in the roof, Felix can see the oranges and reds of approaching sunset. The wall he's leaning against is growing cold. Dimitri has long since pulled out of him, but Felix has hesitated to pull away regardless. 

"Get off," he says, finally, and Dimitri does so without hesitation. Somehow, that stings. The boar pulls away from him, and a moment later Felix hears the rumple of cloth as, presumably, the boar dresses himself again. The sound rouses him from his stupor. He pulls his own trousers back up, puts himself away, and rights his shirt collar again. He's certain he still looks rumpled, but there's naught to be done for it, especially without a mirror anywhere even close by.

When he finishes making himself presentable and turns around, Dimitri reaches forward for a moment, his thumb pressing against the bite marks on Felix's neck. He presses a bit too hard, and Felix flinches, feeling his adam's apple bob against Dimitri's hand. 

Then, Dimitri's eye goes glassy and distant, the same way it so often does. He turns from Felix, his eyebrow furrowing, looking for someone who most definitely isn't there. Felix stands stock-still for a long minute, but Dimitri begins to mutter to himself or to his demons, and he knows it's time to go. There's nothing his presence here will do for Dimitri, and definitely nothing it can do for himself. 

Ingrid is waiting for him when he finally wanders back out of the chapel, a blanket in her arms. She immediately wraps it around his shoulders, shaking her head.

"Was it worth it?" she asks. 

He doesn't respond, because he doesn't have an answer. 

Just like before, it becomes a pattern. He feeds Dimitri. Dimitri fucks him. Dimitri holds him, or lays against him, and pretends for a while to be human. On the better days, Felix manages to fool himself into thinking his presence is helping. He's dragging Dimitri back into the real world, reminding him of his responsibilities. On the worst days, Dimitri is shouting at his ghosts the moment he's finished feeding, and Felix knows that his presence doesn't mean a damned thing. 

He comes back every time. And every time, Dimitri greets him with wonder, his thumb brushing over the marks on Felix's neck, murmuring, low, "You came back." 

Ingrid and Sylvain still try to convince Felix not to go. His father, however, says nothing, though Felix knows he's aware of the feeding sessions. How could he not be? The marks stand out on Felix's neck like a pair of brands. But he never says a word about whether Felix should stop or continue, which is, in its own way, frustrating. Felix can guess what he _would_ say, but he never actually gives voice to it. 

_Tell me I'm doing my duty,_ Felix dares him to say. _Tell me you're glad to see that I've honored the oath of House Fraldarius. Tell me that Glenn would be proud of me, for filling the role he should have had._

Rodrigue never says it. Rodrigue never says a damn thing. His eyes meet Felix's over the war table, and Felix sees his mouth tighten, but he never says a word about what he knows Felix must be doing. 

So, Felix keeps up his pattern. 

Dimitri shoves him onto his knees, opening up his pants and revealing his cock, only for Felix to take it eagerly into his mouth, sucking the animal over him to completion and pretending that every moan and sigh doesn't send a shock down to his own dick. Dimitri takes him against the wall again, or sometimes against the floor. Once, he lays out his stinking, blood-stained cloak and fucks Felix on it face-to-face, like a parody of two lovers falling into bed together. The next time he doesn't even fuck Felix properly, just grinds their cocks together until Felix is a gasping, shuddering mess with Dimitri's come staining his trousers. Sometimes, Ingrid is waiting for him once he emerges. Sometimes, Sylvain is. 

And, after he's made his miraculous reappearance, sometimes it's Dedue. 

After all this time, he doesn't have the energy to be resentful at the man of Duscur. Felix is Dimitri's exclusive feeder, now, the position he'd always thought he wanted. It's worse than his nightmares ever could have warned him. Caring for a beast that seems to forget he's there, half the time, in favor of a cadre of specters calling for blood. Dedue helps him back to his chambers on legs that are wobbly only _partially_ because of the venom still rushing through him. 

"Thank you for taking care of him," Dedue says, once they're at Felix's door. Felix blinks at him, then ducks his head.

"Someone has to, and it's my responsibility," he mutters, tugging the door open. 

He considers that the end of it, but Dedue apparently doesn't. "I'm glad someone did," he says, in his ever-infuriatingly even tone, "but that doesn't mean it had to be you." When Felix looks back at him, he's wearing a slightly sad smile. "But I think His Highness is glad that it was," he says. "Take care of yourself as well. For his sake." 

Felix fumbles for a response, and doesn't come up with one until well after Dedue has vanished back down the hallway. Presumably to go keep up his own vigil. Sometimes, he thinks that when Dimitri saw Dedue again for the first time, alive and well, he gained some semblance of humanity. So maybe, he thinks, it ought to be Dedue who feeds Dimitri. Maybe Dedue's off to do that now, in fact. 

He recognizes the hot feeling fogging up his head immediately. The old, familiar jealousy sinks down his throat like swallowing a hot coal. 

He stumbles into bed and sleeps unevenly, dreams of Dimitri wrapping hands around his throat and tightening his grip. Dedue appears, clad in the armor of a shining knight from a children's story, and Dimitri gasps, releasing Felix and stumbling over to Dedue instead. He stammers apologies, and Dedue pulls the prince to his neck, and Dimitri feeds. It's over in an instant, in the dream, and at once, Dimitri is his old self again, that smiling, gentle boy that Felix had always known was a curtain hiding something rotten and ugly. But he smiles at Felix, and curls around Dedue like a lover, and explains that he's better now.

The entire march to Gronder Field, Felix barely sleeps. He feeds Dimitri, again and again, twice a week as always. But Dimitri's touch has become more hesitant. He's not callous and demanding as a beast in rut, anymore. Felix knows, the hot sickness inside him turning from a single spark into a raging, boiling sea, that it's because of Dedue. The second choice yet again. He was always meant to be the second choice to Glenn, and now he's the second choice to the one Dimitri really needed all along. The one that could actually pull Dimitri from his madness, make him remember the person he'd once wanted to be, was never Felix at all. 

He doesn't bother to go looking for Dimitri, after Rodrigue dies. Dedue will find him, he tells himself. The Fraldarius oath has come to an end. A father and his son, both dead for the sake of preserving the bloodline of a monster. And now the monster has someone else to tend to him. Felix's life stretches out before him, a long endless path with no solace, his family gone, his closest friend and greatest responsibility turned to another. Sylvain and Ingrid are there, but it's not the same. It can never be the same.

The march back to the monastery isn't a long one, and Felix seals himself in his quarters nigh immediately. He considers, over letters and journals and books, what to do. Fraldarius is still a rebel state, fighting in futility against Cornelia's rule. He can't simply return home as the lauded hero, and for that matter, even if Dimitri doesn't need him anymore, his stomach turns at the thought of abandoning him. What would Ingrid and Sylvain say? But there's no need for him. He isn't necessary. He's the backup, the second choice, as ever. The thought of staying here, watching Dimitri recover without his help or without his guidance, out of reach forever, makes him almost as sick. 

His door swings open, bringing him out of his haze to realize that his lamp has gone out and rain is pounding against his window. When he turns, Dimitri stands before him, his white shirt soaked through, dripping on the rug. Felix examines him with an almost dissociative interest. The prince looks haggard. He's thin and bony without his armor on, and it's clear he's been surviving on scraps for a long time, no matter how well Felix fed him after finding him again. His hair is loose and unkempt over his face, and even his eyepatch is askew. 

"I thought you'd be with Dedue," he says. His voice sounds dead, he notes hollowly. The same way Dimitri always sounded, in the chapel, trying to speak to his ghosts. Maybe he's become just like the boar. Walking the earth like the living dead, unable to let go of the memories haunting him. 

"Felix," the boar says. He closes the door behind him, falls to his knees, and _crawls_ over to Felix. He lifts his head, brushes the sides of Felix's face -- not his neck, Felix notes with some confusion -- with his hands, and shakes his head, tears welling in his remaining eye. "Felix," he whispers. "I -- I don't expect you to come back to me again. Not after I took him from you. But I -- I am so sorry, my old friend, I am so, so -- " 

"Come back to you?" Felix echoes. Slowly, his mind, mired in misery and despair and the knowledge that he is the last of the Fraldarius line, begins to pull itself back together. His brow furrows. "You have Dedue," he says, forcing some of the dismissiveness that the statement deserves, if only to cover up the dread gnawing holes in him from the inside out. "You don't need me. I don't think you ever really did." 

Something like wonder passes over Dimitri's face, his eyebrow climbing under his sodden hair. Then, a moment later, he begins to laugh. Felix doesn't know _what_ to make of that. Is this a cruel joke at his expense, or has the boar finally gone completely mad, to a place beyond where even Dedue can drag him out? 

"Felix," the boar prince says at last, smiling almost rapturously, like when he was a boy at the academy and Felix had just agreed to feed him. "Felix, you can be so -- so very stupid, sometimes." His fingers brush Felix's hair back from his face. "You haven't been eating, either, have you? I suppose I'm going to have to take care of you, in turn." 

"Don't treat me like a child," Felix snaps, his anger at last unburying itself from so much black _nothing_ that's been smothering him since he saw his father's corpse. "Get at what you're saying, or -- " The word hits him a moment later, and he stares at Dimitri. "Either?" he demands. 

"Felix," Dimitri says. Now one of his thumbs does find the fang marks, and rubs the line of old scar tissue in between them. "Don't you see? I need you more than ever." 

Felix gazes down at Dimitri, uncomprehending. Dimitri's smile flickers, goes soft at the edges, and his eye darts down to the scar that he's running his thumb along. His expression goes slightly sad, brow drawing low over his eye. 

"You haven't been eating," Felix says, when Dimitri doesn't break the tension. It feels like the two of them are frozen where they sit. Dimitri's eye darts up to him, piercing as the cold sea winds north of Fhirdiad. Felix watches as he licks his lips. The points of his feeding fangs are out, pressing against his lower lip.

"No," Dimitri admits. 

"Why the hell not?" Felix demands, and kicks Dimitri in the shin. Dimitri lets out an "oof," and lurches back as Felix gets to his feet. "You have hundreds of loyal soldiers who would drop to one knee and beg for you to feed from them," he says. "All of your closest friends from school." His mind races. "You have _Dedue,_ " he says, completely uncomprehending. 

"I don't want Dedue," Dimitri says, still on his knees, on the chamber floor, dripping rainwater off his shoulders and out of his hair. "I want you." 

Felix can't make sense of it. His whole life, the second son, the second choice, the second feeder. Dimitri wants him. Dimitri wants _him._

Just like he's wanted Dimitri, his whole life. 

"Get up," he says, and he's already unbuttoning his shirt, his hands shaking. "Get up, you stupid fucking animal, I'm not going to have you starve because you have -- principles, or humanity, or you've rediscovered some sense of -- of morality -- "

"It was never about morality," Dimitri says. "It was always just about you." 

He climbs to his feet, stumbling back toward Felix, his hands flying up to help Felix pull his collar out of the way, open his waistcoat, tug his belt open and down and off. It's a confusing tangle of limbs, both of them struggling to remove as much as they can as fast as they can, but Felix is still unclothed long before Dimitri and Dimitri doesn't wait for an instant before leaning forward and plunging his teeth into Felix's neck. His hands still move desperately, unlacing and then pulling off his own breeches. Felix is only barely aware of it, and only for a moment before the venom hits and his neck bows all the way back. He hears Dimitri's boots hit the floor, but it's all secondary to the heat pulsing through him, the pleasure coiling in his gut, wrapping around his spine. 

When he manages to open his eyes, his vision is spinning and uneven, but it doesn't matter for long. A moment later, Dimitri, clad still in his stupid fucking half-laced shirt, is pushing Felix over to his bed. He moves with a caution that Felix hasn't seen from him since he was a boy, trying not to break practice blades in the yard. Too aware of his inhuman strength, desperately overcompensating for it. 

"Boar," he manages. His voice is a low, desperate groan. "Don't be -- don't be delicate with me, don't -- "

"Never," Dimitri says, pulling his teeth out of Felix's throat for an instant, "never," and then he's biting down again, drinking deep. He must not have fed in a week, hungry and desperate for what Felix has to give him. Not anyone else, not the professor or Dedue or _Glenn._ Felix, the one he's wanted the whole time. 

Dimitri's hips meet his, rolling against him. Felix shouts, his eyes clenching shut again. Dimitri's teeth dig in and he swears he can feel more of the venom surging into him, the fire in him burning hotter and hotter and hotter until he's certain he's about to burn alive.

"Dimitri!" he howls, and Dimitri blessedly pulls his teeth out, yanks Felix's legs open, and drives himself all the way in in one savage thrust. Felix is loose and limp from the venom, his fingers and toes all tingling with pins and needles, and Dimitri hilting in him doesn't hurt at all. In fact, it seems to satiate the fire within him, soothe the desperate flames that Dimitri stoked with his venom. He howls again, wordless and meaningless this time. Dimitri kisses him silent and begins to move. 

For all the times he and Dimitri have fucked, in the depths of Dimitri's madness, it's never been like this. It's more furious and passionate and intense than even the roughest time he's fucked Felix, but there's a care to it, a kindness. He's giving Felix what he needs. What both of them need. It's better than any of the times so far, and when Felix reaches up, seeking something to hold onto, Dimitri's hands find his and their fingers intertwine. 

The prince doesn't bite down again, but he doesn't need to. When Felix manages to open his eyes once more, there's a line of blood from Dimitri's lips down his chin, and his mouth is hanging open. His feeding fangs are still out, deep red, and he's panting like an animal as he thrusts into Felix. Their hands are still clutched together, which can't give Dimitri any sort of real leverage, but he doesn't need it. The unnatural Blaiddyd strength lets him push deeper and deeper into Felix, fucking him like he intends to mark every last inch of Felix, inside and out, as his.

Goddess, but Felix wants nothing more.

"Dimitri," he begs, forgetting himself in the pleasure. A moment later, he remembers. "Boar." 

"No," Dimitri says in a low, forbidding voice. "Not while we're like this, Felix. I might not have earned it, but please -- please just let me hear you say my name, like that, like you -- "

"What? Like I want you, boar, you stupid -- animal -- " Felix gasps, Dimitri thrusting in the middle of his attempt at repartee. "Don't be an imbecile. I wouldn't -- I wouldn't be here, if I didn't -- " 

Dimitri doesn't stop moving, but his pace does slow, and he lowers his head to press an almost delicate kiss against the scar on Felix's neck. "I never want to do this to you again," he says. 

"I'll never let you," Felix replies, and when he catches Dimitri's eye, he sees something hungry and wild there, and he wants it to devour him. Dimitri seems to sense that. He leans forward, scrapes his teeth over Felix's ear, then down his neck. He bites down -- with his blunted teeth -- on the scar and starts thrusting again, even wilder and deeper and harder than before. Felix's back arches as far as it can, and he doesn't last another minute before he yells and his vision whites out. 

"Felix," he hears Dimitri gasping somewhere above him, "oh, Felix, Felix -- " and then Felix's senses fuzz out with overstimulation.

Awareness fades back in slowly, like sunrise after a long night. Felix blinks, realizing that Dimitri has collapsed on top of him, that he's pulled out at some point. His neck aches, dimly, but he has feeling back in his fingers and toes, so he knows it's not from the feeding. He watches Dimitri's back rise and fall with his breath -- still wearing his saintsdamned shirt -- and ponders whether he's actually fallen asleep. 

Dimitri answers a moment later by humming, and his head lifts. He opens his one dazzlingly blue eye, and a faint smile crosses his face. He raises a hand to brush it over Felix's cheek, drifting slowly to the back of his head, and Felix becomes aware of what he's doing a moment later when Dimitri's fingers find his hair tie and pull it loose.

"All of that," Felix says, absolutely deadpan, "and I didn't even fucking take my hair down." 

Dimitri's lips twitch. "I suppose we had higher priorities," he says, and lowers his head again. He has his ear pressed against Felix's heart. Felix lifts one of his own hands to comb his fingers through Dimitri's hair. 

"No more starving yourself," he says, sharply. "I don't care if I'm not there. You can feed from someone else. Dedue, the professor, fucking Sylvain, I don't care." He would be remiss to say that the knowledge that he was the one Dimitri _wanted_ to feed from didn't lend some comfort to the idea. "You need to take better care of yourself." 

Dimitri lets out a laugh that turns, halfway through, into a rather embarrassing snort.

"What?" Felix replies. 

"Only that there's some humor in you saying that to me," Dimitri replies. It's ... nice, Felix thinks, to hear some levity in his voice. It reminds him of better times. "Have you eaten anything yourself, since -- since Gronder?" 

"I've eaten," Felix defends himself, though he doesn't say how much or how often. Dimitri snorts again, and then turns over, pulling Felix with him. The bed doesn't have that much room for maneuvering, made for a single young adult and not two grown men, but Dimitri manages, regardless, to lay on his back and pull Felix to lay on his chest instead. Felix doesn't protest, but nestles his head against Dimitri's chest and listens to his heartbeat, strong even through the cloth of his shirt. It's close enough to human that anyone who didn't know the truth of the Blaiddyd bloodline might be fooled. 

"You came back to me," Dimitri says, just like every other time Felix has fed him since they found one another again. There's a sense of unknowing wonder to it, as though he can't fathom how Felix is even still there. How Felix keeps coming back, time and again, through the madness and everything else.

It's incredibly stupid of him. Felix doesn't know how the boar can have any questions when the answers are so obvious. He lets his eyes shut, breathing out slowly. Dimitri's heartbeat and the sound of the rain cascading over the remains of Garreg Mach lull Felix close to sleep. Dimitri's fingers, stroking the back of his neck, brushing his hair out of his face, don't help with that either. 

"Don't be an idiot, boar," he murmurs, as Dimitri's chest rises and falls under him, alive another day because of Felix. Alive for much longer than that, if Felix has anything to say about it. He lets himself drift, and he lets himself stop worrying. "I'll always come back to you."


End file.
